My Tour with the Beatles, 50 Years Later

What it was like to witness the excitement — and horrors — of Beatlemania firsthand

Larry Kane didn't want to go on tour with the Beatles. The news director of WFUN Radio in Miami felt he had better things to do, like cover the immigrants fleeing Cuba and America's racial problem. But fifty years later, he's proud to be the only broadcast reporter to have spent every minute with the Beatles on their epic 1964 and 1965 tours, their first in the U.S., which essentially kicked off the British Invasion. "My father had warned me when I left to travel with them," Kane recalls with a laugh. "He said, 'Watch your back, these guys are a menace to society.'"

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But in many ways, touring with the Beatles made him a man. At the time, Kane's mother was dying of multiple sclerosis and he had never really traveled before. Now with a ticket to ride with arguably the best band in history, he would get to see the world with the very people who shaped it. Here, Kane, an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist whose most recent book, When They Were Boys: The True Story of the Beatles, delves into the lives of those who influenced and nurtured the Fab Four, reminisces on the adventure that revolutionized rock 'n' roll. —Interviewed by Jill Krasny

Nineteen-sixty-four was a very big year. The Vietnam War was escalating. Racial strife was continuing around the United States. The country was trying to get over what had happened to President Kennedy. And there was a story happening in Miami that turned out to be one of the most powerful stories of the 20th century: Every week thousands of Cubans were coming to Florida, escaping Castro's Cuba.

When I got the invitation to join the Beatles on tour, I didn't think it was much at all.

I was always a very ambitious person. I began my career at the age of 14 and even though I was in school, I was working in radio. My real inspiration in life was my mom, who at the time was battling multiple sclerosis. At 16, I'd be on air a couple nights and when I got home, there would be a note on my pillow from her telling me whether I sounded good or needed to improve.

When the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan for the first time on February 9, we were watching. She said, "I don't know who they are, but they are going to be huge." She had said the same thing about Elvis.

A little before the time she passed away, I found out I was traveling with them. She said, "I don't know, this could open up whole new avenues for you." She was very encouraging about it.

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Here's what happened: I had met the Beatles very briefly when they came to Miami. We did a quick interview. I went to see their second Sullivan concert on February 16. They were coming to the Belleville Hotel in Miami, and that was that.

I got back this letter from Derek Taylor, the Beatles' press secretary, inviting me on tour and to stay in their hotel and in their car with the sum of $3,000, which would cover my travel expenses. Like all journalists, I'd have to pay my portion, so I went to my bosses. They figured they'd syndicate the reports and charge other stations to use them. And I said, "Great, but I don't want to go." I basically told them I didn't want to travel with the Beatles. They're a band. I thought a DJ would have more in common with them, but my bosses wanted a newsperson who could tell the story. So eventually they talked me into it, and I went into it reluctantly.

Most young people today find it shocking. But the first part of Beatlemania was the mania: the girls pulling their hair out, the young people losing control of themselves, the sense of an amazing, amazing story. But what was it? It was a bunch of teenagers chasing after a band and being delirious about them as individuals. It was sort of like One Direction 100,000 times over. To me, it really wasn't an important story. Now, once I started traveling with them, I started to realize not only was I on a special event, this band was incredible. About a week into it, even with all the craziness, I realized they were great.

The first time I really met them was in San Francisco. Ringo was lovely and very intellectually curious. He had the most fervent comments about race relations of anybody, except for John Lennon. Paul was as sweet as you could get. He would have been the best public relations guy in the world. He would make love to the audience with his eyes. And George was quiet, although when he did say something it was usually different. One time there was a fire in the right airplane engine and George was saying, "Larry, tell everyone I've got this on tape — If anything should happen, Beatles and children go first."

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John was like a nerd from the 1950s. Eventually we became good friends. Unlike the DJs or music people, I never asked them silly questions like, "What's your favorite hemline? Do you like blondes or brunettes?" I asked about the draft, about race relations.

Every concert was preceded by an opening act, and they were really big acts. One of them was a woman named Jackie DeShannon, who was sort of the Katy Perry of her day, and another was the Righteous Brothers. The openers only performed for 31 minutes, and I don't think the audience could have taken more, anyway. These groups were totally ignored by the fans. Every single night of those tours in '64 and '65 — and when I think about it, it's so touching — the Beatles would get on the plane, maybe have a drink or cigarette, and come back and kneel down and talk with those opening acts to make sure they were okay.

Although they came from a town that had a very high degree of anti-Semitism and prejudice — sort of a microcosm of the Catholics versus Protestants — they managed to be strikingly gutsy in using their initial fame to carve out a stand against extreme prejudice. And when you think about that, in 1964, for them to take those kinds of stands was kind of amazing.

Organizers booked a concert at the Gator Bowl Stadium and wanted to continue the policy of segregation. The Beatles said they wouldn't play there. And finally, because of their pressure, the Gator Bowl was integrated for the first time ever.

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Another time, we were flying to Seattle and I sat about five rows from where they were in the back and I heard someone say the word kike. I don't know what made me do this, but some things sort of make you explode. So I got up, went to the back, and said, "I'm not going to take that kind of shit." I know they weren't talking about me, but I grew up in a very bigoted environment in southwest Miami and I was unhappy. So I went back to my seat and everybody on the plane was like, "Oh my God, what's going on?" John, George, and Ringo each individually came up to me and sort of leaned down and explained they were being silly and apologized. Paul came by and said, "You okay?" I still felt weird about it days later.

They felt America was a very dangerous place. They felt that the West was really like the Wild West they'd seen in the movies. Only George Harrison had visited in 1962, so he had had some exposure, but not to the big cities. The other three hadn't at all.

I think they were pretty dazzled by the country. They loved New York — the bigness of it, the size of it, the height of it. They were absolutely stricken by the countryside outside of Colorado. I think they were also totally absolutely unprepared in any way for the zeal and excitement of kids in America. And they were freaked out by the hotel we stayed at in Dallas, which was selling little postcards that showed the path of the assassination. It was pretty gruesome.

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While they were there, two girls crashed through a plate glass window and the boys were very, very upset. Emotionally devastated.

The large crowds frightened them. The first crowd was 19,800 in San Francisco and they were overwhelmed by it. There was danger everywhere. The police departments were not prepared and these kids were very young. The difference between a riot in a neighborhood and a riot by 14-year-olds trying to have a good time is quite different.

One night, there was a party at the place they were staying, Reginald Owen's mansion. A film star. They stayed at this big house. I was at the Beverly Rodeo Hotel on Rodeo Drive. They said, "Come over, we have too many women."

They were saying it'd be nice to have a more even-keeled crowd, so this was the scene. Paul McCartney is at the piano and at his side is a woman named Peggy Lipton — the mother of Rashida Jones — who was a budding TV personality at the time. John was at the other end of the room. Ringo was hanging out with people, just talking. I'd say there were 50 to 60 people there. No tape recorders.

This young woman came up to me, very perky, sort of like a cheerleader, and she said, "Who are you?" And I said, "What do you do?" And she said, "Well, I'm an actress." And I said, "What kind of acting do you do?" And at that point, she started screaming. It felt like ten minutes to me. She was shrieking in a guttural scream. And everyone turned to me, and she said, "I just starred in a movie called The House of Wax and that's what I do for a living." Lennon said, "You, Larry Kane, are a bad boy." I was kind of a straight-laced person next to their insanity.

When the Beatles came, for most adults, they were viewed as an aberration. First of all, the hair shook up everybody. Even though we can look back now at the anniversary and talk about all the experiences with them and the craziness of it, the very simple fact is that in those days, in 1964 and part of 1965, actually, they still were just a phenomenon.

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Today we look at them and say, "Oh my God, the Beatles." So here we are 50 years later and it's easy to forget they were extremely controversial, totally different. Some newspapers called them insects, shaggy-haired. But actually they were quite neat. And then as society changed, they changed.